Today I'm Thankful For... My Stiffer Body

Yes, that’s right. Today I finally expressed gratitude for the stiffer body that I have. Then a miracle started to reveal itself...

No magic dust or wands. Nothing flashy like that. Finally though, a negative thought pattern disguised as truth was dragged out from the dusty closet of the subconscious mind. Caught in the light, it cannot continue operating under the radar as it has for years!

It led me to spend decades hating the stiffer body that I had and wishing it were like the stronger, bendier bodies around me. I was wrapped in the chains of comparisonitis. There’s no one to blame but…

“It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me… Hi.” (thanks, Taylor Swift)

But seriously, when I started to write the next words things started to shift and chains that held me back started to break away.

Because of the stiffer body I have…

• I get to move slower which helps me move with more mindfulness than speed does.
• I get a free set of training wheels more advanced than anything money can buy to use to help me build strength for inversions and better upright posture.
• I get to surround myself with other stiffer (of varying degrees) people who are learning to breakthrough and bring balance on the mat as well as off in the real world.

While the stiffer body I have has kept me from moving in beautiful fluid daily vinyasa practices like a lot of #yogisofinstagram for now, the lesson it led me to see is worth more than 10,000 vinyasas. That is…

For most of my life, I was wrong.

From the time I told my 8-year-old self,

“I don’t have the same bone structure as the other bendy kids in dance class so doing a split among other leaps wasn’t in the cards for me so don’t bother too much…”

to my adult years, comparing my now to someone else’s moment of triumph because I didn’t think, “what did they have to do to get there?” Instead, I assumed, “oh, they’re so beautiful and talented – I bet they were born that way.” I didn’t realize how fixed and limiting my mindset was. To anyone who tells themselves you either have a certain knack or talent for something or you don’t, I want you to take a good look at that in your journals and nip that sucker that’s sucking the life out of you!

For real, though!

Living under that rock of blindness is frickin’ miserable and makes all the inevitable challenges I need to grow in life much harder. I allowed myself to live it though. Until now. Now when I see someone doing something amazing, instead of resorting to, “they must’ve been a dancer or a gymnast in another life” (I am tremendously inspired by dancers and gymnasts by the way) or “they have a real athletic knack or talent” I am inspired to work on my mat to build the same drive, strength, and stability that allows for such fluidity and grace in movement. And because of such passion and the bug of comparisonitis that bit me as a kid, led me to seek opportunities to learn as an adult a crystal-clear understanding of the prep work it takes that kids hardly have to think about in their training.

Strengthen your faith and your core in different ways.

I hope this encourages another stiffer body like me to keep working on the foundation that builds strong upright bodies for movement and sitting healthier and more alert at work instead of seeing it as either talented or not.

We all have a choice, we can see things fixed in stone or with a growth mindset, fluid and able to change. In that sense, talent is someone who has taken any skill to a high level of precision. Talent can be built and adapted. Thank God for neuroplasticity happening in our complex brains!

A Note from the Author:

A huge THANK YOU to those who are reading this now. There aren’t enough words to express my gratitude to you. Without you I’d keep losing my way only seeing a contribution behind a screen instead of seeing how my max value could be off a screen too. If this writing impacted you in a positive way let me know in the comments below.

---<---@ Thank you and God bless.